• Curriculum Vitae
• Literature in English II, sections 003 and 004
  
• Palgrave Macmillan Series in Irish and Irish-American Literature

Thanks for visiting my English Department homepage.  Let me tell you a little about my current research, my published work, and my teaching.

My research interests include 20^th century Irish, British, and American literature and culture.  I have published three books focused on this period--Joyce and the G-Men: J. Edgar Hoover’s Manipulation of Modernism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Working-Class Culture, Women, and Britain, 1914-1921 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), Names and Naming in Joyce (University of Wisconsin Press, 1994)—and a fourth book co-edited with a colleague at Ohio State comes out this month titled Modernism on File: Modern Writers, Artists, and the FBI, 1920-1950.  I have just finished co-editing another book of essays titled Irish Modernism and the Global Primitive, a collection that focuses critical attention on an aspect of Irish studies that has gained scholarly prominence only recently, that is, the way modern Irish writers engaged primitive figures and promoted primitivism in their works to arouse nostalgia, administer cultural critique, and/or dictate nationalist imperatives.

I am working this year to complete two other book projects.  The first, titled Extorting Henry Holt & Co.: J. Edgar Hoover and American Print Culture, focuses again on J. Edgar Hoover’s role in American publishing.  My second project focuses on the Gaelic Athletic Association (the GAA), founded in Thurles, Co. Tipperary, in 1884, and its links both institutional and ideological with the concurrent Irish Literary Revival being promoted by Yeats, Lady Gregory, and Edward Martyn, who ran the Irish Literary Theatre’s Abbey Theatre.  The GAA’s role in athleticizing Ireland’s post-famine generations, strengthening her nationalist movement, and promoting cultural revival in Ireland at times presaged and at other times challenged the proselytizing work of the literary revivalists, who were bent on reanimating Irish literature and culture by engaging Irish myths and legends that once proclaimed her glories.  In this book-length project, I tease out the relationship between these two powerful groups—both so central to the modern and Free State Irish aesthetic—and reveal a history vexed by corruption, disingenuity, and intrigue.  How these two groups succeeded in shaping and directing pre-Free State (i.e., pre-1922) Irish culture even when at odds with each other marks the center of my project’s focus.

My work in the field of modern and twentieth-century Irish literature and culture led to my appointment in 2004 as General Editor for Palgrave Macmillan’s new book series in Irish and Irish American literature.  This November the first book in the series came out--Contemporary Irish Republican Prison Writing: Writing and Resistance by Lachlan Whelan.  Four other titles currently in production will follow quickly on its heels. 

I absolutely love my work and can’t imagine doing anything else.  Sometimes I think a stanza from Wallace Stevens’s poem “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” sums up my academic life perfectly.  He wrote, “I do not know which to prefer . . . / The blackbird whistling / Or just after.”  Similarly, I do not know which I like better: teaching a great class, or just coming off teaching a great class; working on writing a book, or just coming off working on writing a book; reading some wonderful student work, or just having read some wonderful student work.  Not a bad quandary, when you think of all the people you know who hate their jobs.

I have won several teaching awards since graduating from the University of Miami’s doctoral program in 1989 and coming to Kent State including “Professor of the Year” from the Panhellenic Council at the University of Miami and the “Distinguished Teaching Award” from KSU’s Alumni Association and the University Foundation.  After 18 years at Kent, my graduate teaching includes seminars on international modernism, British and American modernists, modern British and Irish novels, 20th-century British and Irish literature, Irish Postcolonial Literature, modern Irish fiction and poetry, seminars on James Joyce and Irish literature and culture, a course I developed for graduate assistants called “Teaching Modernism with Emerging Technologies,” and the required doctoral Methods course.  This spring I am teaching one of my favorite courses, Literature in English II, a course that traces British, Irish and American literature from the Romantics to the Moderns. 

Since my hire in 1990, I have directed four doctoral dissertations in the English department: one on James Joyce that was published as a book with Fairleigh Dickinson University Press in 2003; one on A. S. Byatt and the profession; one on modernist hagiography; and another in-progress dissertation focusing on the Oedipal in twentieth century Irish fiction.  One of my dissertation students was awarded the University’s highest award for dissertation research (the David B. Smith Award), and two have received the English Department’s highest award for dissertation scholarship—congratulations to Sean Murphy and Melissa Jones for writing such engaging work.  In addition, I have directed several Masters theses and have examined dozens of students in Ph.D. and M.A. qualifying exams in my field. 

Most of my teaching is at the undergraduate level, and includes the Core course “Literature in English II,” several LER courses, First-Year and upper-division writing courses, introductory courses on women’s literature, survey courses on British literature, and courses on the Harlem Renaissance, 20th-century Irish literature, literary modernism, modern poetry, the modern novel, major modern writers, and the novel from 18th-century to the present.  Next spring (2009), I’m teaching an undergraduate workshop in Editing and Publishing, a new 3-credit course I came up with last semester after several English majors in my class volunteered to work on the page proofs of one of my books.  The workshop will cover a range of topics in editing and publishing and provide hands-on, “real world” practice for undergraduate students. 

One of the things I like about Kent is that faculty can easily establish connections with faculty in other Colleges and Departments, and I have cultivated exciting interdisciplinary teaching and research opportunities here.  I am especially energized by the work I’ve done with colleagues and pre-service teachers in the College of Education, and with the work I’ve done with undergraduates preparing for graduate school in KSU’s McNair Scholars program.   

Why not come by and chat?  My office is on the third floor of Satterfield Hall—302D.   I’d be happy to talk with you about being or becoming an English major or to discuss the trials and tribulations of teaching or the realities of graduate work.  In my office, I’ve got a commercial-grade espresso machine and a mini fridge stocked with sodas, waters, and seltzers.  So you know where to find me.  Until then, take care.  I hope to see you and I look forward to watching you succeed in your studies at Kent State University. 

Interesting links:

An article about student artwork:

http://www.kent.edu/SuccessStories/FacultyStaff/Archives/Culleton.cfm

One of my favorite things: A really good thesaurus for people who think visually, the Visual Thesaurus:

http://www.visualthesaurus.com/

Links to some of my books

Recipe for Hungarian Goulash